The ever shrinking world of POE from Silvertel and the new Ag9900M.

This tiny ultra-miniature POE PD module is truly the smallest POE module and POE solution in the world. Capable of delivering up to 12W of power, and even rated for up to 12W at 85°C, it packs an incredible performance into the smallest of spaces. It is the culmination of years of development in high power and size reduction from Silvertel……

We said in our last article about solar power energy harvesting that there many trends in electronics. One such long standing and pervasive trend is the need and drive for continual miniaturisation. With many technologies it can be relatively straightforward, but in the world of power, it’s never easy, as power components, transformers and heat dissipation all create difficult to overcome barriers to miniaturisation. Meanwhile, cutting-edge miniaturization typically becomes more expensive as sizes are reduced. Luckily, Silvertel now have years of experience in pushing the boundaries of POE back with modules for up to 100W and squeezing high power into ever smaller packages through creative and innovative engineering. This expertise has delivered the miniaturised Ag9900M series, at almost the same price point and with improved performance over the larger Ag9800M. The expertise comes in part from experience gained in producing the world’s highest power 100W POE modules. High power POE is typically used in high end AV HDBaseT applications, IP Cameras, marine sensors, access control systems and video conferencing systems. Silvertel’s SIL range of 802.3af compliant Ag9XXX modules has also been used extensively throughout the world since 2005 and the format of the modules and package will be familiar to everyone in the industry.

At first the driving force behind the evolution of the module range was to reduce cost, resulting in the Ag9700 series, the lowest cost module Silvertel produce. Then the real miniaturisation work began.

With requests and demand for smaller footprints the Ag9700M, our first isolated SMT package POE module was designed and released. While well received, the height of the Ag9700M series (18mm) was a restricting factor, using the standard transformer package from earlier Silvertel ranges. With IOT applications such as sensors and home automation systems requiring small packages and fingerprint readers housings continuing to shrink, pressure to further reduce package sizes continued. The Silvertel engineering team embraced the challenge, to produce an even smaller footprint and lower profile SMT package POE, Ag9800M, using a new much smaller transformer. The re-design created the smallest ever POE module in a tiny footprint, Ag9800 series.

Amazingly, Silvertel’s engineering team identified during the Ag9800 design, that significant further reductions were still possible, through improvements in efficiency and an even smaller footprint transformer.

Enter the Ag9900M:

Now released, Ag9900M is the latest and truly cutting edge POE module from Silvertel. Ag9900 has superseded the Ag9800M as the world's smallest POE module, with anamazingly tiny 21mm x 14mm footprint.

With a rapidly increasing number of remote sensors and gateways being designed for the Internet of Things, all in increasingly small packages, with low power consumption and frequently requiring external installation, the advent of the Ag9900M is perfectly timed to deliver all the advantages of industrial temperature low power POE in the smallest of footprints.

To put the package reductions into context, the footprint size reductions from the Ag9700SIL package to the current Ag9900 ultra miniature SMT package are illustrated below:

That’s an overall package size reduction from Ag9700S to Ag9900M of 71%.

The Ag9900 is already complemented by the Ag5300, with a SIL footprint comparable to the standard Ag9700 series, Ag5300 is the worlds smallest POE+ module. For further details contact your local distributor or Silvertel.